Quayle-linked site in libel suit

The sleazy website that’s dominated chatter about Ben Quayle’s campaign for Congress has been slapped with an $11 million judgment after failing to respond to an unrelated libel and slander lawsuit.

A clerical mistake by the plaintiff's lawyers, however, could nullify the judgment.

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A Kentucky teacher and Cincinnati Bengals cheerleader sued TheDirty.com — or at least she thought she did — after bloggers on the site suggested in a December post that she may have contracted two venereal diseases.

But U.S. District Court Judge William O. Bertelsman on Wednesday ordered Los Angeles-based Dirty World Entertainment Recordings — which the complaint and judgment said operates TheDirt.com — to pay $1 million in compensatory damages and $10 million in punitive damages for failing to respond to the suit.

Sarah Jones's attorneys had actually intended to sue Scottsdale-based Dirty World LLC, which runs the TheDirty.com.

That site’s founder, Hooman Karamian, who writes under the alias Nik Richie, was named in the complaint. But Richie said neither he nor his company was ever served in the case. The offending post has since been removed, Richie said.

TheDirty.com, which mocks racy photos of often scantily clad women and men, figured prominently in the final weeks of Quayle’s Republican primary to replace retiring Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.). Quayle is the son of former Vice President Dan Quayle.

In blog posts, Richie hounded Ben Quayle to admit he wrote for an earlier version of the site, DirtyScottsdale.com, under the pseudonym “Brock Landers,” a fictional porn star in the 1997 flick “Boogie Nights.”

Though he’s denied blogging under the name Brock Landers, Quayle acknowledged he did write a few fictional, satirical posts for Dirty Scottsdale, which chronicled the trashy side of Scottsdale’s club scene.

On Tuesday night, Quayle beat out nine other candidates to win the GOP nomination for House District 3. But his Democratic rival’s campaign quickly seized on Quayle’s ties to the site, saying “This is an election between Jon Hulburd and Brock Landers.”

The next day, Bertelsman ruled against Dirty World Entertainment Recordings. Kentucky attorney Eric Deters, who is representing Jones, said it was irrelevant that the incorrect corporation, website and physical address were listed on the complaint and judgment.

“We’re still going to serve that S.O.B. personally,” Deters said of Richie. “I’m going to make that dirty, rotten, mean, vermin bastard pay. He’s a piece of dirt.”

When asked what he thought about Quayle blogging for Dirty Scottsdale, Deters — who has been following national media coverage of the political novice — called it “absolutely disgraceful.”

“He ought to be ashamed of himself,” Deters said “He’s another lying little weasel politician. That’s not slander; that is my opinion.”

Richie meanwhile vowed to stop blogging about Quayle — and perhaps politics in general — if he tells the truth about his online identity.

“If he admits that he is Brock Landers, then I will cease from putting him on the website and move on,” Richie told POLITICO. “No one forgets what their pseudonym is.”